Getting shit off my chest

I suppose is the point of a blog in the first place, isn't it?
I've never been able to figure out exactly how the Soon To Be Ex sees the world, in the sense that I've never been able to understand how she constructs the narrative that informs her day to day life. We all do this, it's how we function as human beings, in my opinion. You take the events that happen around yo and slot them into the events of the past and your perceptions of the future. It's the narrative thread you follow that lets you maintain the continuity of your life, your relationships with other people and your role in society. I also think it informs your outlook on life to a large extent. I've seen this referenced in things like the Just World Hypothesis where people believe that the world is the best of all possible worlds, and that all good and bad things that happen to people are deserved in some way. Bad things happen to bad people, good things happen to good people, etc. If your life sucks, it is your fault. I have to say, I've never met someone who believes this and also believe it applies to them for some reason.
Anyway, I had a point here. I've never been able to quite slot my own viewpoint into the S.T.B.E. point of view, mostly because a lot of the time I find it at variance with my own. I'm not talking about the belief in ghosts, though that was always a serious source of friction between us, I'm talking about her perceptions of people. There always seems to be a sense that people are naturally bad, and trying to take advantage of her, or screw her over in some way. If she likes you, you can do no wrong in her eyes. If at some point you go to the bad for some reason (and it can be real or imagined), you go seriously to the bad, and nothing can convince her otherwise.
As background: The S.T.B.E has a trust fund. Her family is quite well off, and as a result she's never had to work. In our marriage she's always been the "breadwinner", by which I mean bread gets sent to her on a regular basis. Parts of this have been really good. It bought our house, and has allowed us to live in a style that would be beyond us if we were both working stiffs. It has, however, been a major source of tension, in that she expected that the broke 23 year old university drop out should be bringing in the same amount of money as her to be "fair". As time went on, and her affection for me faded, she figured I was taking advantage of her, and not contributing my fair share at all. Which, you could probably argue financially is true. I can't match her dollar per hour value, since the amount of hours she actually has to work amounts to zero. She also sees jobs as a sort of a hobby, and so the time I spend working and earning a paycheque is sort of frivolous and not actually related to the money I get paid. I've tried to get her to understand that if I don't show up for work, I don't get paid. This has never been very successful. I've tried to explain to her that the health insurance I have, I pay for with my paycheque, and the hours that I work at the company. I don't think she really grasps that either, since her parents always took care of that, so I don't think she really groks the connection between those two things either. She sees my job as something I do for fun... since I think that's how she's seen work the few times she's decided to get a job in the time we've been married.

So my job doesn't count as a contribution to the household, nor as a sacrifice of the time I could be, say, spending with the Boy.

I do the cooking at home. I enjoy it, and I'm good at it. This is not something she knows, or wants to know how to do. I'm not sure how she sees cooking. I know that she doesn't think it counts as a contribution... because I enjoy it. She seems to think I do it because I like to mess up the kitchen. I think in her world, the kitchen would never actually be used to prepare food, it would be dusted once a month.

I have been told cooking does not count as a contribution to the household.

I do laundry. She does laundry too, but for some reason she can never remember that it's something we both do. She's excoriated me for never doing laundry... when I was in the process of washing our clothes. Of course, she was also yelling at me that I never did anything for her, and when I pointed out to her that I cooked for her and washed her clothes, she yelled
"When do you cook for me?! When do you ever do laundry?!"
I held up the spatula in my hand I was stirring with, and pointed at the basement with it.
"I'm making your lunch, and I have a load of clothes in the laundry as we speak."
"Fuck you!"
I think my witty rejoinder was,
"You're insane!"

So laundry isn't a contribution. Nor is fixing stuff around the house. Parenting doesn't really count. Feeding the pets.

Typical day for me:

Get up, walk to work. Work eight hours. Walk home. Get ambushed by the Boy, explain I can't play with him, I've got to make dinner. Assuming I didn't buy food on the way home to cook, dig through freezer, cook dinner. The S.T.B.E. is sitting on the computer playing games, and has been there for hours. serve dinner, eat dinner. While the S.T.B.E. washes the dishes, play with the Boy until bed time (and do homework with him if it's not done when I get home). Give the Boy his bath, put him to bed. He takes a long time to get to sleep, so it's usually 11:00 by the time I'm free. Possibly do laundry. If not exhausted, do a bit of writing. Go to bed. Later, rinse repeat. On my day off, try to find something interesting for the Boy and I to do.

I'm not whining about that really, I mean there's plenty of parents who have it a lot worse, who are holding down two jobs, or are desperately poor, or have no where to live. But it would be nice if I wasn't coming home to someone who seems to still think I'm a useless 23 year old university drop out who contributes nothing to the household. I'm paying bills. I'm buying groceries. We rely on my insurance. I devote every moment I'm not at work to being a parent. I've grown the fuck up. 


Honestly, it shouldn't bother me. It really shouldn't. Her opinion of me shouldn't make the slightest difference to me... and yet... I spent so many years chasing her respect and love, it's hard not to get to where she said I needed to be and not turn around and say "Where's my fucking cookie? You harped on my for years to get here, and nothing I did counts!". It's very hard to come to the realization that there was no brass ring, that it will always be jam tomorrow, and that everything she said would make her happy was a big. Fat. Lie.

Which in retrospect makes perfect sense, even if I can't wrap my head around how she sees the world. It took her up until last year to admit she was a depressive and start medicating for it, and all this time she's been convinced that her feelings have to have an external cause. She's not sad and disappointed because of bad brain chemicals, it's because someone around her did something, or she's missing something in her life, and if only she had it, she would be happy. Which, when I really think of it, means that for her the brass ring is a lie too, but on an existential level. What a toxic combination we were, me with an almost pathological need to try to make her happy, and her simply physically incapable of ever getting there. It seems inevitable that no matter what I did, after she drove everyone else away her dark monster would turn on me. I can't help this woman, I can't make her better, and she doesn't want me to.

This can't be over soon enough.